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Monday, 10 December 2012

My latest contribution to the South China Morning Post's 'Rewind' column, which looks back at a movie, book and album that share a common thread ... this week's theme was 'days', and the obvious suspect for film was Dog Day Afternoon.

On a sagging shelf in my dad’s dark and mysterious study, past the fraying macramé, the Ludlums, yoga manuals and The Joy of Sex, perched the tattered twin piles of his MAD magazines.

My dad favoured reading them on the porcelain throne, and so like father, like son. I’d grab a handful of dog-eared issues from the bottom of the pile and slope off to the loo, settling in to read my favourites, Dave Berg’s ‘The Lighter Side Of’’, ‘Spy vs Spy’, ‘Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions’ and which ever movie was being lampooned by Madison Avenue’s most subversive talents.

This put me in the somewhat post-modern position of having read, often dozens of times, the MAD satires of many classic 70s films years before I would be allowed to watch them or be fully capable of understanding them.

Of all these warped masterpieces, one stands out: ‘Dum-Dum Afternoon’. I would pour over its pages, troubled and fascinated by these weird, wise-cracking, self-aware bank robbers, the cross-hatched exaggerations of Al Pacino and Jon Cazale – especially Cazale - and the seething cesspit of a city they inhabited.

PACINO REDEFINES THE STICK-UP, WITH SOME HELP FROM CHUPA-CHUPS

When I finally saw Dog Day Afternoon for the first time, some time in the 80s, Cazale’s pale, stricken visage as Sal, the dim-witted accomplice of real life bank robber John Wojtowicz, played by Al Pacino, had already been cemented in my brain as the archetypal scary, wild-eyed weirdo.

Wojtowicz and his friend Sal hold up a Chase Manhattan branch in Brooklyn in August 1972, bungle things badly, and in the hostage drama that ensues, New York becomes transfixed when it is revealed Pacino’s character has a second wife, a pre-op transsexual played by Chris Sarandon (in his first movie role).

Pacino gets the plaudits and pimp-suit, steals the scenes, sweats and screams, but Cazale’s pared-back portrayal of a sad, stupid, murderous loser in over his head and about to get a bullet in the brain is a revelation of a performance.

OUT THERE CAZALE

“There’s just something in that face that takes you into an area … that’s very dark. Personally dark … and … heartbroken,’’ said Sidney Lumet, Dog Day’s director. Cazale is the poster boy for New York in the mid-70s; a slouching, cadaverous angel of death in a broken city beset by blackouts, heat waves, muggers, riots, corrupt cops, gridlock, garbage strikes, race hate and decay.

When Dog Day Afternoon is released in 1975, New York City has just been declared broke and in massive debt. Vietnam is still raging, the Attica prison massacre has just happened, and Richard Nixon is seeking a second term. (Taxi Driver, the other celluloid avatar of this era, is still a year away from its cinematic release.)

LUMET TAKES OVER THE ASYLUM

It’s an immediate hit, hailed as Sidney Lumet’s career high point, with a fine ensemble cast including Charles Durning, Carol Kane, and Lance Henrikson. Writer Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke) receives an Academy Award and a Writers Guild Award for his screenplay.

Cazale would die of cancer at 42 while making The Deer Hunter. Dog Day Afternoon is one of only five films he made, along with The Godfather, The Conversation, and The Godfather Part Two.

Lumet, who died in April 2011, was the embodiment of the bruised Big Apple, the anti-Woody Allen, always ready to shine the spotlight on some new dank corner of rotten Gotham. Pierson, who passed away this July, also kept New York close: his last job was as writer and consulting producer on the much-awarded cable series Mad Men.

Dog Day Afternoon stands as a time capsule of New York at its nadir, and a monument to one of the most creative and exhilarating periods in Hollywood’s history.

Monday, 3 December 2012

This piece just appeared in the South China Morning Post's Postmagazine ... meet the one and only Janette Slack .... in fact, meet her in person when she makes her triumphal return to Asia this month following the release of her first album, Torture Garden Session

The biggest DJs don’t always live up to their names. Fatboy Slim was neither fat nor particularly slim. Plump DJs are notably svelte. Meat Katie is a bloke who prefers broccoli to beef. Pale weedy Moby is hardly leviathan. John Digweed does not in fact dig weed. DJ Scratch is a so-so scratcher. Beardyman is beardless. And Hong Kong’s prodigal DJ daughter and rising global star Janette Slack is anything but.

Slack is a force of nature in corsets; a genuine steel wheel diva, self-starter and anti-slacker with killer looks and the skills to back them up. She has become the avatar of Torture Garden, London’s premier fetish club which began with cult nights at Opera on the Green before landing its present home at the sprawling Ministry of Sound. Her glam brand of raunchy tech house infused with electro and breakbeats plus a personal interest in fetish fashion found a perfect home where the freaks come out and the gimps are brought out. Torture Garden’s legion of latex and leather-clad fans include Marilyn Manson, Dita Von Tease, Jean Paul Gaultier, Boy George, Courtney Love and Marc Almond (Adam Ant was famously refused entry for not dressing outlandishly enough). Slack has spun before most of them.

Part Eurasian sex bomb, part one-woman self-promotional juggernaut and part relentless energizer bunny, she has barely paused for breath since leaving Hong Kong and a well-paid teaching job for London on a make-or-break mission to achieve international DJ fame. And now she’s on her way back for a triumphal return, following a two-month tour of Australia, with gigs in Hong Kong and Bangkok to mark the launch of her first album, Torture Garden Session, a mixed journey concieved to capture the spirit of Torture Garden featuring six original Slack tracks and ‘re-rubs’, as she pervily terms her remixes, of the likes of D. Ramirez and Meat Katie.

Slack had to overcome parental disapproval and near starvation to make it in a city with ‘more DJs than bus drivers’, as Slack herself admits in ‘Veer’, one of a short film series sponsored by Dr Martens by cult director Doug ‘Scratch’ Pray on ‘people who embody an independent attitude’. The film’s release four years ago marked the turning point for Slack’s career and she’s been riding a rubber-studded rocket to DJ fantasy land ever since.

Slack’s sonic boom-boom has substance. No Eurasian Paris Hilton or DJ bimbo eruption, she is a professional sound engineer who writes and produces her own tracks, which she describes as “cheeky, chunky, twisted and demented ... a blend of rock riffs, funk, progressive melodies, sexy vocals and cinematic soundscapes with relentless basslines and thick, grooving drums’’. The first single from her album, ‘You Can’t Stop This’, a collaboration with Kickflip and Channel 4’s Phone Shop star Javone Prince, is at number four on Beatport’s electro chart and has been granted ‘must have’ status. Next to be released as a single is ‘Slave to System’ with Tyrrell, producer of Sasha’s Miami hit ‘Lalalalalala’ and 90s band PM dawn, and vocalist Kris Widakay.

She’s a Mixmag future hero, she’s won London’s prestigious Denon DJousts competition and Europe’s 2010 Pink Armada female DJ battle, been nominated for Best Breakthrough DJ, hosted the International Breakbeat Awards twice, and secured residencies at Torture Garden and Air. Her apartment has a sound studio and features an authentic replica of Dr Who’s time-travelling Tardis (an old London phone box) as its entrance, and she scoots around London in fetish regalia on rollerblades. As her biography reports, she ‘has the UK breaks and electro scene by its hairy balls and rides around London in a gold-plated beach lounger pulled by a team of pedigree swans’. This hyperbolic missive was penned by Frank Broughton, Mixmag deputy editor and author of Last Night a DJ Saved my Life. Co-opting influential friends to her cause is useful tool in the Slack skill set: she has been bigged up by everyone from Hybrid to Carl Cox and from Utah Saints to Air.

She has appeared recently on SKY1’s Gadget Geeks and spoofing a Eurotrash DJ on former Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond’s new BBC show ‘Secret Service’. She is regularly called up for photoshoots with London's edgiest independent designers, models for Vauxhall and Pepsi, and collaborates with one of London’s hottest makeup and hair designers, Sammm Agnew, while fetish godfathers Murray and Vern, Lady Lucie Latex and Kaori’s Latex Dreams now custom-make her outfits for gigs.

DAMMIT JANETTE: KISS KISS,BANG BANG, AND HOLD THE PORNO HOUSE

“Even before I got into DJing, I always enjoyed any excuse to dress a bit differently to the herd,’’ says Slack. “Not in a rebelious way, I just saw stuff I liked and got inspired and intrigued by certain characters I saw in movies, TV or in real life. So when I discovered that bindis look good when even just wearing jeans and a tank top (inspired by Gwen Stefani) i did just that I school.

“When it came to DJing, for the first seven years, I did tone it down, as I was playing breakbeat, which is very male dominated compared to, say, house. So I went back to wearing baggy trousers, over size T-shirts and baseball caps, as I didn't want to appear to be a gimmick if I got all dressed up. I de-sexed myself, rather.

“I was in my mid-20s when I got my first gig at Torture Garden. I knew what I normally wore would make me stand out in the wrong way, as everyone makes an extra effort to dress up. So it was a good excuse to go shopping and buy a load of clothes I've actually always wanted but thought I could never get away with wearing. I thought f*** it, I've been DJing for 7 years now, on vinyl and on 3 decks, so I can wear what the hell I like.’’

Of her upcoming gigs, Slack says she loves playing in Bangkok but Hong Kong’s kinetic 24-hour clubbing scene will always be home. “Living in London for the past 13 years, it’s easier to take a step back to observe the countries I visit. When I had a chance to explore Bangkok for a month as a DJ a couple years ago, it didn’t take much time at all to settle in. It really reminded of the vibe in Hong Kong, where people are out every night and there’s always something to do.

“Bangkok is bigger and can afford to have stand-alone clubs like Bed Supperclub and Q Bar and the multi-room palaces of Royal City Avenue. In Hong Kong most of the clubs are part of high rises and are smaller. But both cities are equally vibrant and both have clubbers who demand and appreciate underground music.’’

Janette Slack’s Asian science fiction double feature opens at Club Fly in Icehouse Street on December 22, and then moves across the pond to Bangkok, with gigs to be confirmed at ‘one or two clubbing institutions’. With a brutal schedule of globe-trotting gigs in place for the next 12 months to lock in global dominatrix status, it’s a rare chance to catch the hardest working freak in show business on her home turf.

Sunday, 18 November 2012

Move over Marc Faber, Thailand's new 'Dr Doom' has arrived. This is a piece just filed for November's edition of Finance Asia on Stephane De Baets, iron-willed investment banker, part time 'Belgian Thunder' triathlete and ironman, prognosticator and seer, and all round good chap. Edited down somewhat for the magazine, I've put the original piece in full here.

WET MARKET: STEPHANE DE BAETS OPTS FOR A LUNCHTIME SESSION

Investment banker with a difference Stephane De Baets is a breath of fresh air. The towering, boyishly touselled Belgian breezes into the bar in Bangkok’s trendy Soi Ruam Rudee, oozing enthusiasm and energy.

“There are a few things I’d like to talk to you about,’’ he says. “One is a new form of private equity venture which I believe takes a ground-breaking approach to fund management. The second involves reinventing fine dining. And I’d also like to touch upon inside out money flows, if I may.’’

While most investment bankers are content to merge, acquire and move other people’s money about, De Baets is on a different trajectory. When he’s not training for his next gruelling Ironman race, the founder, managing director and star turn at small but impeccably connected Bangkok boutique investment bank OptAsia Capital prefers to spend his time dreaming up new ways of doing things, taking aim at sacred cows and generally thumbing his nose at the establishment.

His no-holds-barred weekly ‘Trading Notes’ has become something of a cult publication in certain Bangkok circles for its bold predictions and colourfully tortured language: he is less of a gloom merchant than Mark ‘Dr Doom’ Faber, but when the mood strikes him, De Baets does a fine turn as contrarian Cassandra, railing against everything from Europe’s ‘slow motion, freeze frame car wreck’ to China’s looming hard landing and the mainland’s overvalued ‘laundry markets’ of Hong Kong and Singapore while referencing everything from the Fibonacci sequence, video games, hip hop to obscure Morrissey lyrics.

Monday, 12 November 2012

Here's one from the vaults, a long and rather disturbing read on the insidious march of methamphetamine I penned for the South China Morning Post's weekend magazine as the millennium drew to its conclusion

BABY'S GOT BLUE ICE

EVA conjures a pale ghost of smoke from a fold of tinfoil, using her lighter's flame like a lover's caress. It curls and shimmers and tries to escape but Eva chases it all the way down the foil, sucking greedily on a water pipe made of straws and a shampoo bottle clutched between her knees. She holds the smoke down, savouring it, letting it work its icy tendrils into the farthest reaches of her lungs, then tilts her head back and blows a jet of smoke into the gloom with a sensual sigh. Pupils start to swell. A delicious shiver runs through her body. She gazes down dreamily at the foil, where a milky trail traces the length of its crease. "This is my vitamin," she giggles, batting fat black lashes over big sloe eyes. "I have to take it every day." She flicks her lighter and strokes the foil and chases the ghost. And then she chases it again. And again. And again.

Eva's "vitamin" is methamphetamine hydrochloride, more popularly known in Hong Kong as "ice". It is also Asia's looming epidemic; a cheap and potent drug which gets users higher and keeps them high longer than anything else on the market while offering huge profit margins to drug syndicates. In the vivid argot of the drug netherworld, ice is to speed what crack is to cocaine; a smokeable rock form of the drug which transports the buzz to the brain faster and more powerfully than its powdered, snorted

cousin. But the hit from crack lasts 15 minutes.

A comparable amount of ice will get you up for anything from eight to 24 hours. It is, like crack, intensely addictive; a mental magnifying glass that initially transforms users into deities, eliciting superhuman performances at work, in bed, at parties. Once addicted, however, users can look forward to a long slide towards a panoply of pain and torment. Long-term use ravages the mind and body and can lead to respiratory disorders, hypertension, stroke, manic depression, paranoia, hallucinations, violent outbursts and psychotic episodes. The prognosis for recovery is far more grim than for someone hooked on heroin.

In the Philippines, South Korea, Hawaii and Japan it is already a massive problem. In the United States, Attorney-General Janet Reno recently named it a national threat and President Bill Clinton said it was on the way to becoming "the crack of the 1990s". And in Hong Kong, it is by far the fastest-growing drug of abuse. Even notoriously behind-the-times government figures record a jump of more than 250 per cent in users last year, while police warn it could usurp heroin as the territory's top drug problem in coming years.

Wednesday, 7 November 2012

I was part of a team of 25 writers from interesting cities around the world asked to contribute dispatches on the US elections for Roads and Kingdoms. For a view on the election many agreed 'sucked', I sought expert comment from a peculiar class of bar in the dark heart of Patpong Road. http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2012/election/#bangkok

Fear, trepidation and disappointment stalked the streets of Patpong last night, as voting began in the US presidential elections.
Fear flashed across the face of Nong Ning, one of several ladies loitering outside a blowjob bar with the unlikely name ‘Star of Light’, when I told her they were voting in America right now. “No drink alcohol tonight?’’ she asked. On the eve of local elections booze is banned in Bangkok, which means slim pickings for the nongs (younger sisters) of Patpong.
Trepidation creased the mamasan’s greasy features when I entered the small and dingy bar. Three girls hovered around a single elderly fellow, making half-hearted, darting grabs for his crotch. No oracle appeared, despite the name’s vague promise of prophecy. Nothing was illuminated.
“Obama or Romney’’ I asked. ‘Obama black man. Maybe he big,’’ one girl offered. The mamasan sniffed. “I like Bush’’.

THERE'S A PING PONG SHOW IN PATPONG EVERY MINUTE

Disappointment, suddenly and crushingly, was all mine. I was in Bangkok’s heart of darkness, its ur-strip of sin and sleaze, where dank doorways portended parades of pudenda, and I was four years too late. For the first election in years, there was no Bush.
Bush had been ubiquitous in Bangkok. ‘Good Bush, Bad Bush’ the t-shirts observed, juxtaposing George W’s idiot grin with a luxuriant tangle of pubic hair. ‘Fuck you Bush’ said the matter of fact graffito on a contstruction hoarding near my home.
Dizzy with visions of puns unpenned, sick with the sense of loss, I lurched from the Star of Light, running the gamut of importunate hawkers, proprietors of ping pong emporia and leering ladyboys.
I stopped, caught my breath, batted away a midget trying to sell me Viagra and reminded myself of the mission. The US Presidency had a long, lewd history with the hummer, from the Kennedy clan’s Camelot kneetremblers to Bill Clinton’s intern eruptions, sticky dresses, exploding cigars and limp excuses.

ALL ELECTION, ALL DAY, SUCKERS

This time, the entire electoral process sucked, from the first broken promise to the last forlornly flapping chad. “Campaign sucks hope out of US public,’’ sniffed Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times.
“How the World's Greatest Democracy Sucks at Elections,’’ Esquire explained to its readers. Vice.com lamented how ‘Voting Tech Still Sucks’, while Sheknows.com wondered if it “sucked more to be Michelle Obama or Ann Romney’’.
But it was the Street Art Gum Election 2012 that posed the crucial question: “Obama vs. Romney - Who Sucks the Most?’’, allowing voters to decide with one spit of their gum.
There was a perverse symmetry in asking a posse of Patpong oral sex experts which US Presidential candidate sucked hardest. It seemed right, somehow, to finally give them a voice, considering Patpong had been getting screwed by Americans since the Vietnam War.

OF THE SUCKERS, BY THE SUCKERS, FOR THE SUCKERS

I ascended the steep narrow stairs to Kangaroo Bar, perched on a barstool, and noticed the décor was strictly Down Under, as were some of the staff.
From a dark room at one end of the bar, shadowy movements and furtive slurping issued. I recalled asides about golf-balls and garden hoses, and suck-starting leaf blowers.
I pressed on with my quest. But the mission was a bust. No one in the bar, at least no one capable of speaking, had a clue who Mitt Romney was. They knew the name Obama, and agreed this must be a good thing.
‘Mitt’, said a tall girl named ‘Chicken’ , sounded like the Thai word for knife.
“Good Mitt or Bad Mitt?’’ I pressed. She frowned. Then smiled. ‘Bad if you are unfaithful. In Thailand, we use the knife to chop off the penis and feed it to the ducks.’’

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

My recent cover story for South China Morning Post's Postmagazine, where I was senior writer for several years what seems a lifetime ago. Pulling the story together, as well as a reunion party at Homebase in Hollywood Road, the last place I DJ'd regularly in Hong Kong (I had caught the fever largely because of Neptune, Hong Kong's rave parties and being bowled over by the music of the day) was a fun but somewhat draining experience. DJing on Pioneer CDJ decks after being a vinyl aficionado and not having played a set in a club for three years also frayed a few nerve endings, but it turned out alright on the night. The real DJs, Christian and David Lam, played some great music at the reunion gig and there was no shortage of blasts from the past. Lee Burridge, who has made serious global waves (and .wavs) in the world of electronic dance music chipped in with some priceless observations. The story seems to have struck a chord (if not a piano synth arpeggio) in certain Hong Kong circles.

One morning in 1996 I stepped through a neon portal and down a stygian Wan Chai staircase and found myself on another planet. The inhabitants of this alien world floated about with benign smiles, dressed in luminous garments, and seemed to communicate without words. Great pulses of electronic sound swept around me, drawing me to what seemed like the command centre, where an unfeasibly pretty leader jabbed buttons and tweaked strange dials, bending his people into improbable shapes.
I had been in this same physical space on previous occasions; a subterranean Lockhart Road lair where Filipino bands blared and booze-rouged expats put the moves on amahs. But on this particular morning, somewhere after 5am, fresh from visiting my first rave party at Jimmy’s Sports Bar in pursuit of a story for this magazine about how the drug ecstasy was changing the face of Hong Kong clubbing, it was as if time and space had shifted.
I felt as if I had stumbled upon the secret dawning of the Age of Aquarius; harmony, brotherhood and understanding seemed to flow through the thudding beats and the flashing strobe. This was no longer some dingy basement clip joint, it was a seething, surging, hugging, grinning, gurning, roiling, raving mad tide of good vibes.
Suddenly everthing became clear. This was the mothership. The HMS Britannia of some parallel universe, setting sail for the wilder shores of altered states with a truly loony crew as the event horizon of Hong Kong’s handover to China loomed into view. This was frantic fin de siecle fantasy, escapism and hedonism, utter nonsense that made perfect sense. It was the best of times and the worst of times, the alpha and omega, the ecstasy and the agony, the soaring high and the crashing comedown.
For the ‘FILTH’, the chancers, the gifted gabbers, the wide boys and barrow boys, the restless souls who had fled comfortable middle class lives for a great adventure and a fatter pay packet, and even for a wide-eyed naïve Brisbane boy like me, this was our Woodstock, our punk rock, and we knew it.
To the north was the Motherland, and we all knew winter was coming. But for a brief season, Hong Kong’s ‘summer of love’ reigned.
We had found the glowing magma core of the barren rock.
This was Planet Neptune.

Sunday, 27 May 2012

This story gave me the heebie jeebies for months after I wrote it. And it recently came back to mind in the course of writing a South China Morning Post column on a British citizen of Taiwanese extraction busted in a Bangkok hotel room with six babies' corpses in his suitcase. Police were called to room 301 of a Chinatown hotel room after - wait for it - neighbours complained they couldn't sleep because of babies crying all night. (Cue Twilight Zone music). Black magic, or 'sayasut', is alive and well in Thailand. I ventured into the lair of 'Nain Ae', along with fellow journalist Thomas Brecelic, to try and get a handle on the famously defrocked 'baby griller' of Thailand. Nain Ae boasted that he prowled backyard abortion clinics for fresh foetuses that he could use to extract 'nam mun prae', a black magic love potion highly prized by high society dames. I've got photos of him, but they are buried in a box somewhere. Will add them when I have time to dig them out. After this story ran, a Hong Kong woman contacted me seeking directions to Nain Ae's abode, which as a friendly chap I passed on, with a warning to be careful. Two weeks later, she called me in tears, saying she had just been raped by, you guessed it, Nain Ae. This nasty piece of work got a jail term of 100 years for sexual assault and other crimes against decency. Although my wife tells me he was released recently and is once more at large. I've done a short film treatment on some of the above. I hope this doesn't give anybody nightmares.

Nain Ae can’t understand what all the fuss is about. “I have grilled a lot of babies, but they were already dead,’’ he shrugs. The defrocked monk from the central Thailand province of Saraburi did a stint in prison thanks to his penchant for grisly black magic, but he’s back in business now and teaching his trade to eager apprentices.

I WON'T DO YOU NO HARN: RAKSAJIT

When you walk into his magic room, you realise this is not the abode of an ordinary monk. A desicated foetus, mouth open in a silent scream, stares with unseeing eyes over a row of human skulls daubed with scribbles and spells. Cobwebs depend from dusty statues of ancient Hindu and Khmer gods and demons, covering mouldering stacks of books filled with centuries of black magic wisdom. Moth-eaten animal pelts festoon the walls. Incense sticks smoulder as waxen voodoo dolls wilt in the heat.

Nain Ae’s fame has spread far and wide in the Land of Smiles since he was jailed for six months by the Supreme Court and branded “the biggest threat to the monkhood since communism.’’ That was after a television crew filmed him grilling a stillborn infant, to summon the spirit of “khumon tong’’, or the golden baby. Oil collected from the chin of a basted babe is said to be the basis of a potent love potion, and Nain Ae says everyone from gangsters to high society dames have come to his chicken ranch, looking for a little help with their love lives.

"I'm Nain Ae,'' says the tiny chap in baggy blue cut-off jeans advancing down the stairs. He's covered from head to toe in intricate tattoos. He bows, hands touching in a traditional wai, and flashes a stony-eyed smile. Then he ascends the stairs with nimble hops, rattling the yellow fangs of a tiger skull on the doorstep, before settling into a throne of sorts.

MY PRECIOUS: A 'KHUMON TONG' OR 'GOLD BABY'

Small pointed teeth tear off a great wodge of chewing tobacco and he masticates noisly before directing a feculent jet into a spittoon. ''Do you know about my powers?’’ he asks. “I am super-powerful. You see these tattoos? You cannot shoot me or hurt me. Bullets will bounce off. Knives can't do any harm.'' I'm thinking, 'Bat Fink (and Karate!)'. He pulls down one of the swords and half-heartedly jabs it into his stomach.

He spits again, then hops up and disappears. A moment later, he’s back, dressed in baggy white karate pants, a gold fez and several loops of chunky wooden beads around his neck. A finger beckons, and we follow him down a gloomy hall, past a cooking pot full of skulls. "They’re fresh from a graveyard,’’ he says. In his lair, more skulls are arrayed on a shelf.

So, er, when did you start grilling babies? "Shut up,'' he snaps. "I want to tell you my life's story first.'' Born Harn Raksajit, he was reared an orphan in a Saraburi temple. A precocious child who believed himself touched by the Lord Buddha, he followed other dek wat (temple boys) to train as a Nain (novice) and adopted the nickname Nain Ae.

"Even from a young age, I was attracted to magic,'' he says in a weird, high-pitched monotone. "But there was no-one here to teach me.'' Despite a lack of tuition he scoured books and honed his powers, making his first real foray into magic by predicting lottery numbers. Then he left, to roam Burma and Cambodia, in search of further instruction.

"See these books,'' he says, gesturing at the musty tomes stacked on the floor. are full of Khmer magic. These belonged to my ajarn (teacher). Some are hundreds of years old.'' He returned to Saraburi and, keeping mum about his occult powers, was duly ordained a monk. But it wasn't long until the robed renegade realised the commercial potential of his skills and began promoting himself as an expert in sayasut, or black magic.

SIZE DOESN'T MATTER: A 'PHALAT KIK'USED IN MAGIC FERTILITY RITES

Belief in baby-grilling is particularly strong in the provinces around Ayutthya. It has its origins in 19th century poet Sunthon Phu's quasi-historical epic Khun Chang, Khun Phaen. Khun Phaen, the central character, was a high-ranking soldier during the reign of King Ramathibodi II (AD1491-1529), long before the ancient capital was sacked by Burmese maurauders.

After an argument with his father-in-law, Khun Phaen stabs his pregant wife to death then cuts his unborn son from her stomach and takes the foetus to the temple. He builds a fire, places a grate over it, then wraps the infant in pieces of sacred cloth covered with prayers and grills the body until nothing is left but skin and bone. This ghost child, with whom Khun Phaen can communicate, becomes a talisman and a secret weapon, protecting and advising him.

Nain Ae breaks into an upbeat folk song about his exploits, which he explains was composed by a zealous fan. He points to several big lao khao (rice wine) jars, full of evil slime, sitting in front of the skulls. "That's the glass I pickle foetuses in,'' he grins. He reaches over them, into a hidden space under the shrine and extracts a smaller jar containing a liquid roughly the colour and consistency of cooking grease.

Reverently, he unscrews the top and sucks out some gloop with a day-glo orange syringe. "This is the oil from Khumon Tong,'' he says. "One drop of this rubbed onto someone you want to love you, they will be yours within an hour. Man or woman, it doesn't matter. It cannot fail. If I rubbed some on your wife, she would be mine and never leave this house.'' He sells a small vial for anything up to 100,000 baht.

GRAVE OFFENCE: THIS AMULET CONTAINSDIRT FROM SEVEN CEMETERIES

Nain Ae says obtaining the stillborn infants was easy. He developed mutually profitable agreements with local hospitals. Some parents would even bring their stillborn offspring to him. The choicest babies came from the womb on Sundays, and the best day for grilling was Tuesday. To conjure up the baby spirit, the grilling had to be done in the temple's ordination hall. The child is then wrapped in sacred cloth inscribed with prayers and roasted for four hours over hot coals until mummified.

So has he ever grilled a live baby? "Are you stupid? I'm not someone you want to joke with with. Don't you believe in my powers yet?'' He fixes our female translator with unblinking eyes and seems to go back into his trance. A dribble of tobacco juice rolls down his chin. "You had a miscarriage when you were young and you've had two husbands,'' he intones. Her face goes white. "How did you know that?'' she stammers.

Nain Ae says he won’t give up sayasut, but won’t be so foolish as to demonstrate his black arts on national television again. He disappears into his bedroom again, then reemerges, dressed as Michael Jackson. He busts a few moves, attempts the Moonwalk, and grins like a hyena. "I'm not a bad man, you know. My magic is good magic.’’

Thursday, 24 May 2012

This is my original South China Morning Post magazine piece from 1996 on Hong Kong's exploding rave culture and what police were touting as an 'ecstasy epidemic'. I was standing on the outside looking in when I wrote it. I've resisted the temptation to edit some of my youthful exuberance or correct a few inaccuracies (Graeme Park playing Trance? I think not. 110 beats per minute? Puh-lease.) If memory serves (and it frequently doesn't) I had actually dropped my first E a week or so before I wrote the story (by myself, for some inexplicable reason in Joe Bananas, which was never one of my haunts pre- or post-rave scene). I liked it. I just wasn't brave enough to make such an admission in the story. Neptunes, the much-loved, short-lived centre of Hong Kong's 'Summer of Love', such as it was, makes a fleeting appearance. Next week, I will travel back to Hong Kong to look at this moment in time through the prism of the 15th Anniversary of the Hong Kong handover, and a resurgence of interest in Neptunes via a Facebook group (and 'secret' group) that exploded in recent months. Love or hate Facebook, it reconnects people, and it has been entertaining and quite moving seeing the people who were there get back in touch and begin sharing the tunes, stories and memories of a very heady time. I'll update this with the magazine cover and some images when I dig them out of a box.

Ah am f***in' well fed up because there's nothing happening and ah've probably done a paracetamol but, f*** it, you need to have positive vibes and wee Amber, she's rubbing away at the back ay ma neck and saying it'll happen when this operatic slab of synth seems to be 3-D and ah realise that I'm coming up in a big way as that invisible hand grabs a hud ay me and sticks me onto the roof because the music is in me around me and everywhere, it's just leaking from my body, this is the game this is the game

and ah look around and we're all going phoah and our eyes are just big black pools of love and energy and my guts are doing a big turn as the quease zooms through my body and we're up to the floor one by one and ah think I'm going tae need tae shit but ah hold on and it passes and I'm riding this rocket to Russia . . .

Thus enthuses Irvine Welsh, the high priest of heroin chic, who has recently turned his attention to the drug du jour in his imaginatively-titled tome, Ecstasy. It is probably as good an attempt as any to document the weird, seductive fusion of music and emotion and chemicals embraced by millions of people every weekend.

Perhaps each of the recent decades has had one drug above all others which has coursed through the nebulous veins of the zeitgeist, in which the hopes and fears and foibles of a new generation are reified. In the 1950s, it was the dope-shrouded dharma bums of the Beat Generation; in the 1960s, trippy hippies were taking electric kool-aid acid tests; the needlepoint netherworld of heroin clouded the 1970s; and in the 1980s, greed-charged yuppies did their best to hollow out their septums, tethered to the twin comets of the stock market and cocaine. As for the 1990s, a brief false dawn heralded a time of jaded, grungey slackers who had tried everything and aspired to nothing. As the decade wears on, however, the so-called Gen-Xers seem to have been well and truly subsumed by a rave new world.

Amid an avalanche of conspiracy theories, tabloid beat-ups and ugly ignorance, the symbiotic circus of house music and ecstasy is slowly but inexorably penetrating the mainstream of youth culture. Far from being an evanescent late-eighties experiment, the dance-drug scene continues to gather steam as the end of the millennium looms.

The literary world is also just waking up to the ecstasy experience. In Welsh's wake comes a host of E-xploitation books, including AD Atkins' Sorted and On One and Julian Madigan's The Agony of Ecstasy, which seek to explain the highs and lows of pharmaceutical life at the business end of the 20th Century. Rave culture has even percolated into the lair of the lad - the latest character introduced to readers of Viz magazine is Ravey Davey Gravy, who is prone to break into dance steps at the merest hint of a thudding, repetitive noise (in one adventure, he mistakes a jackhammer for a "jungle and ragga trip") and is given to orotund pronouncements such as: "I like larging it to techno and house!"

While debate rumbles on about the risks and effects of the drug and government departments stumble around in a haze of denial, buck-passing and apathy, the Hong Kong judiciary, at least, has made up its mind where it stands on ecstasy.

Magistrate Henry Brazier jailed finance brokers Sean Dullage, 27, and Dominic Way, 28, for 16 and 15 months respectively for selling one tablet of the drug at a rave at Jimmy's Sports Bar in December, shocking even police who made the bust with the severity of the sentence. The pair had been approached by an undercover officer asking where he could get some "stuff". Way's girlfriend had not shown up, so he offered the officer her tablet for $300 - towards the greedier end of street value.

In the High Court last week, Mr Justice Arthur Leong cut their sentences by four months, before launching into a tirade against the perils of ecstasy, branding it a killer and a threat to Hong Kong youth. He decided Brazier had erred in that the basic starting point for an ecstasy trafficking sentence should be 18 months, not two years. This, according to Way's lawyer, Alexander King, puts ecstasy a bit lower than heroin, for which trafficking sentences begin at two years, but above opium. "This ruling
means one tablet can get you 18 months inside. You don't even have to sell it - even passing one on is considered trafficking," says King.

Take a random sample at any Saturday night dance party in London or Sydney or Hong Kong and you will find stockbrokers and doctors and construction site labourers united by their blissed-out grins and saucer eyes, chests thudding to the commanding rhythms of methylene-dioxy-methylamphetamine (MDMA) and 110 synthesised beats per minute. In fact, take a recent Saturday night at Jimmy's Sports Bar at the Hong Kong Stadium, where DJs Graeme Park and Tom Wainwright from The Hacienda - something of a Manchester institution - have arrived to dispense their diet of Trance, Handbag and Happy House ...

It is ten minutes to midnight and the bouncer's booming voice slices the steamy summer night. "There's going to be cops on the floor tonight. They've said if more than two people are busted, they'll close it down." He is built like a masonry outhouse, has a bristling goatee and mohawk and looks meaner than a chapter of Hell's Angels. He draws a stertorous breath and continues ominously: "So if you've got anything to take, take it NOW!" The small queue of early arrivals giggles nervously. Bottles of Evian
and Volvic are uncapped and hands slide surreptitiously up to mouths. Surprisingly, those keenest to get an early start are not red-faced, bristle-headed expats but young clusters of Chinese slathered in chic and slinky designer clubbing gear, with the odd daub of Fetish Fashion.

Inside, more bulging neanderthals turf out the last of the football crowd, as local DJ Joel Lai conjures some preliminary thumps and squeaks and growls from the fearsome array of technology spread out before him. In the toilets, a raw-boned youth chuckles resignedly to his mate that it won't be long till he's forking out $300 for a dog-worming tablet. At 12.10 precisely, Lai stops tinkering and gets down to business. The beat kicks in - and will not cease until well after 6 am. With an evil whisper, smoke
machines shroud the floor in fog and the lights transform the place into a swirling neon maelstrom.

By 12.25, the first Es appear to have made their way from the stomach wall to the brain. The bar is lit up by a sudden recrudescence of inane grins and a couple of blokes make the first tentative forays onto the dance floor. As I'm standing there, trying hard to look the part in the latest Nike trainers, jeans and gently psychedelic t-shirt, I overhear a young Australian accent whingeing to his mate: "I can't believe it. I necked it an hour ago and I still can't feel a bloody thing. Bastard must have sold me a f***ing aspirin or something." I stifle a giggle at how life is mirroring Welsh's art. But he moves off, lost in the rapidly swelling crowd, and I never do find out whether that invisible hand ever grabbed a hud of him and put him on a bowel-churning rocket to Russia.

It's now 1.30, and the place is heaving. From the flashing teeth and random hugs, it does not seem unreasonable to assume 70 to 80 per cent of the crowd are sorted and on one. Nearby, three long-legged beauties have suddenly become one amorphous, amorous tangle of limbs. The floor seems to be bouncing up and down in unison, peopled by everything from gaggles of topless Chinese boys with torsos by Michelangelo to one chronic case of Saturday Night Fever, complete with acres of lapels, a gold medallion and what appears to be a thatch of snap-on chest hair. Drugs are changing hands in shadowy handshakes, but the promised police presence seems decidedly low-key; the threatened busts have thus far not materialised.

Jack is the committed raver's worst nightmare. Until a recent transfer, he was a senior officer in the police Narcotics Branch and the agent who had the dubious honour of arresting Dullage and Way. "We had one agent who had been undercover in that whole scene for six months or so, who was familiar with the rave scene in the UK, got to know who was involved here. But we didn't want to blow his cover, so myself and other officers would attend these events and the agent would point out potential dealers.

That way, he wouldn't have to appear in court if anyone was arrested," says Jack. "When Dullage and Way were asking us what they were likely to be facing, we told them most probably it would be a suspended sentence. We had no idea they would get such a harsh sentence."

He is unexpectedly candid about the difficulties of policing the ecstasy trade. "We definitely do not have a handle on how it's coming in, whether it's just a lot of individuals bringing in small amounts or a big, organised syndicate.

"One recent development seems to be that the Chinese heroin traffickers are now showing some interest in ecstasy. It's quite profitable: they can buy it in Europe for $50 a tablet and sell it here for $300. So especially with a growing number of locals now getting into the scene, they are looking to cash in."

He says the easiest way to get the drug into Hong Kong is literally by E-mail. "Sending tablets through in the post or by a courier service is pretty safe - the chances of it being seized are small." Most ecstasy sold in Hong Kong is manufactured in Europe - usually Frankfurt or Amsterdam.

If Way and Dullage are one type of ecstasy casualty, another is Jane O'Riordan, who was found dead last year, with ecstasy in her bloodstream, in the bed of her friend, RTHK radio presenter Harvey Crump. Her name is often trotted out as Hong Kong's answer to Leah Betts, the ecstasy victim who became a household name in Britain after the "Sorted" campaign, featuring a stark mugshot and the rubric "just one ecstasy tablet took Leah Betts". Indie band Chumbawumba countered with their own campaign, pasting up parodies of the poster proclaiming: "Distorted. Statistically, you're just as likely to die from swallowing a bayleaf than from taking an ecstasy tablet."

The dangers of MDMA can be enhanced by the various nasties it is cut with, including LSD, dog-worming tablets, decongestants and horse tranquiliser. It was first synthesised in 1912 by a German pharmaceutical company for use as a diet pill. It resurfaced in the US during the 1970s, and was used by psychotherapists as an anti-depressant until its growing popularity as a recreational drug saw the Food and Drug Administration ban it. It induces feelings of affection and closeness, even among strangers, by making the brain pump out neuro-transmitters known as serotonin and dopamine, which stimulate happy and loving feelings and suppress pain.

One government agency which appears to be expert at the suppression of painful realities is the office of the Commissioner for Narcotics. In reply to a request for information on ecstasy use and its effects came a one-page hand-written fax proclaiming the enlightened news that the reported individuals abusing MDMA in 1994 and 1995 numbered a big fat zero. It's obviously some time since the Commissioner and his cronies popped down to Jimmy's of a Saturday night.

The lack of apparent official concern may partly be due to the fact that ecstasy use is part of a youth culture based predominantly on interior feelings and self-absorption, whose adherents get together once or twice a week to get happy and hug each other a lot. It hardly seems a jagged threat to the very fabric of society, in the way the angry posturing of punk might once have appeared ("E? I'm on ego," a renascent Johnny Rotten sneered recently). Its substitution of sensuality for sexuality must also prove an attractive option for those who have grown up in the shadow of AIDS - many users say they are perfectly happy to end their night in love with the world, but alone in their beds; a kind of instant safe sex pill.

There seems little relationship between dosage and fatalities. People have died after taking one tablet (the ecstasy-related death toll in the UK is now nudging 70), while in one case, someone who took 42 tablets over 24 hours got away with a fast pulse, high blood pressure and a nasty hangover. The level of MDMA in his blood was 70 times higher than in people who have died from the drug. One theory on ecstasy deaths is that a small percentage of the population may be deficient in the enzyme that breaks
it down.

Some people die from overheating, as the surge in serotonin raises body temperature, which can be exacerbated by long and frantic bouts of dancing. This can be avoided by listening to your body and drinking plenty - but not an excessive amount - of water. In rare cases, including that of Leah Betts, death was due to water intoxication. Under the influence of the drug, some people drink so much water that the brain can swell up and be crushed by the skull. Recent research on squirrel monkeys suggests use of the drug can cause long-term brain damage. Nerve cells damaged by the spurts of serotonin tended to grow back abnormally, effectively re-wiring the brain.

Peter, 22, an advertising copywriter, and Donald, 25, a musician, are two friends who are immersed in the club scene and intent on rewiring their brains. Peter reels off the "brands" of E currently on the market in Hong Kong, selling from anywhere between $200 and $300 a tablet. "At the moment you can get Barney Rubbles, Thunderbolts, Swans, Apple Macs, Hammer and Sickles, and Snowballs," he says. They are so-called because of the designs imprinted on the tablets. The effects of different types may vary, depending on how they have been cut, but generally pills of the same batch will produce fairly consistent effects.

Peter: The pushers always, always keep pills aside for the big club nights, which kind of reflects the whole idea of the ecstasy culture, to have a focus. They want you to have a good time on the night. In England, the people involved with the clubs are often also involved in the selling of E. And here, there are, like, affiliations, definitely.

Donald: Obviously, there's an element of being wary of strangers when you're trying to score at a club, particularly when you know there are going to be undercover cops. Most of the cops are pretty f***ing obvious. You can just tell, they don't speak the same language, they're not clued in.

Peter: Ask the DJ! (laughs) Usually you are there with a bunch of your friends and someone always knows someone who knows a dealer. That's one of the best things, it's this grass roots kind of thing, you are all there taking care of each other. If you're on a pill and everyone else isn't, you're not going to have a good time. The best nights without a doubt are when everyone is flying high, not just you and your friends, but everyone in the room. You're smiling at people you don't know, it's a really
transcendent experience.

Donald: I must say, the last couple I've done didn't do that much. I wouldn't say it was disappointing, but I haven't felt it as strongly as I've done in the past. I think it's a combination of a build-up of tolerance and the novelty factor goes.

Peter: What surprises me, though, is when you talk to [rave] organisers and they spout this anti-drugs attitude. It's just complete hypocrisy and contradiction. I mean, the music is designed for people on E. Even the way it's played, there's breaks, and there's like bursts of euphoria, and the best DJs are the ones who understand a crowd that's on E and they give you spaces and journeys - I mean, that's what they call it, a journey.

Donald: The worry, though, is you just don't know exactly what you are doing to your brain. People say that in Britain, it's the perfect drug for the masses from a politician's point of view - it's relatively affordable, you accept everything, you are amiable. You start to wonder if it's more radical not to take drugs. After a while you start to think, does it actually take something out, do you have a store of happiness in your body and can you exhaust that? We've had weeks where we went mad on the weekend, and until Wednesday, you're just depressed and really moody and you think, right, I've got to chill out now and not do it for a while. Then the weekend rolls around, and you're back on it. When it gets to that point, that's when you have to tell yourself, well, I'm just being young and stupid.

It's 3 am now and Jimmy's is full of people just being, well, young and stupid. The sweat is flowing as freely as the $30 bottles of Evian, coursing down gyrating flesh in varying states of undress. It is hard to say whether it is hotter inside or out, and little eddies of bodies buffet each other in the quest to find out. I am drenched in sweat and have finally surrendered to the relentless, hypnotic beat. The DJ is dropping rapid-fire depth charges which shudder through my gut and my hips begin to sway of their own accord. Some punters are already on the way down and lie sprawled around the fringes of the venue. But the floor remains packed, partly due to a constant stream of new arrivals and partly due to chemical replenishment. Danny, a mid-20ish Chinese lad, is feeling rather more relaxed now, having dispensed of the dozen or so pills he risked bringing in to sell on discreetly to friends for $300 a pop. With a wad of cash bulging in his wallet, he glances round then necks the last one himself.

Another two hours and the sun's first rays are struggling through the smog outside. Judging by some of the weird contortions taking place on the dance floor, the squirrel monkey theory doesn't seem too far off beam. There is some serious synchronised hugging happening, spreading out through the crowd like Mexican waves. By 5.30, a mantra strikes up, gathering volume: "See you at Neptune?".

Local DJ Lee Burridge has already fled Jimmy's for the subterranean Wan Chai haunt half-an-hour earlier, where the last of the pot-bellied, greying gweilos and amorous amahs have made way for the hard-core ravers. Burridge will continue to spin his steel wheels until the sun is nudging the yardarm. I arrive shortly after six, and the place is already filling up. Unlike many in the rave "industry", who publicly espouse "Just Say No" platitudes knowing full well a goodly slab of the punters are eccied to
the eyeballs, Burridge is refreshingly sanguine. "There's no two ways about it, E goes hand-in-hand with the dance scene. I'm playing in clubs most nights, and you see a lot of people who arrive in town, cane it for three months, then have to get off it for a while, before their wallets or bodies give out."

By 8 am, it's all starting to seem horribly surreal. One body - that attached to my drum-and-bass-befuddled brain - is definitely about to give out. Some are still bopping vigorously on the dance floor, looking as fresh as when they arrived at Jimmy's eight hours earlier; some line the walls, looking like extras from Night of the Living Dead. And some are just wandering the streets, as that hollow feeling grows and grows, afraid they can never go home because they seem to have left an important part of
their brain in a club in Wan Chai.

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

This piece is just out in the latest edition of Finance Asia, which is such a cool magazine that if you want to buy a copy, it will cost you a hundred bucks. Plus it goes into Cathay Pacific first class lounges and seat pockets, so it's bound to be smeared with a better class of dim sum. Full disclosure - UOB was a client back when I worked at Inhouse Brand Works and this campaign was probably my last big job in advertising. But I was not working for the bank in any capacity when I wrote this. But Dear UOB Bigwigs - feel free to get in touch if you need some PR.

You can tell a lot about a bank by its choice of headquarters. Architecture has become the ultimate bank statement.

Look no further than HSBC’s Hong Kong headquarters, the world’s most expensive building when Sir Norman Foster’s exoskeletal structure was unveiled, levitating above Central like some alien mothership. Or IM Pei’s Bank of China building, an architectural marvel inspired by bamboo, created to symbolise the inexorable rise of the bank and of China, its cutting angles reputedly aiming blasts of bad feng shui at the colonial oppressor.

In London, the august board of Barclays opted to think inside the box, taking up residence in the reassuringly boring glass cube of One Churchill Place, while in Frankfurt. Deutsche Bank pushed the boat out by turning its old headquarters into one of the world’s greenest and most sustainable structures in the hope some warm fuzziness might rub off on a hostile public.

United Overseas Bank (Thai) PCL occupies one of Bangkok’s most architecturally exuberant and whimsical buildings – Sumet Jumsai’s award-winning ‘Robot Building’ in Sathorn Road. The structure was selected by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles as one of the 50 seminal buildings of the century and earned its creator the first ever award bestowed on a Thai designer by Chicago's Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design.

It’s an unlikely home for a bank that has built its brand upon prudence, caution, a low profile and a slow-and-steady approach; more C-3PO, say, than the Terminator or HAL.

OPEN THE VAULT DOORS, HAL

But UOB might at last be growing into its look-at-me head office, throwing a coming out party pegged to the looming changes to Thailand’s Deposit Protection Agency (DPA) and revealing plans to raise its profile and make a grab for more market share

The DPA came into force in 2008 to replace the Bank of Thailand’s
Financial Institutions Development Fund, which gave a blanket guarantee on all deposits in all financial institutions to restore confidence in a banking system shattered by the 1997 financial crisis.

On August 11 last year, the sum guaranteed under the DPA dropped from the entire total of deposits to a maximum of THB 50 million. But it’s August 11, 2012 that is causing ripples through Thailand’s financial community: on that date, the maximum any depositor can expect to reclaim if a bank goes under plummets to just THB 1 million.

Which is why I am seated in a plush top-floor executive lounge somewhere in the robot’s brain with Han Chong Tay, executive vice-president of UOB (Thai), former Major in the Singapore Armed Services, and one of the driving forces and fresh faces behind the bank’s decision to take a ‘more proactive role’ in Thailand’s banking sector.

AND OUR NEW ATM FEATURES THREE SLOTS FOR YOUR CASH

What this means is a short sharp marketing push to position UOB (Thai) as a safe bet in uncertain times, with a view to catching the attention of nervous depositors with sizeable sums sitting in local bank accounts. As leverage, the bank is trumpeting its National Long-term Rating at 'AAA(tha)'; Stable Outlook, from ratings agency Fitch, which was affirmed by the agency on November 25, 2011, and again last week (April 30, 2012), no doubt to audible sighs of relief from the bank’s boardroom. It shares this honour with just one other bank in Thailand, a competitor it visibly pains Mr Tay to name: Standard Chartered.

The AAA rating factors in the backing of the Singapore-based UOB Group (rated 'AA-'/Stable), which Fitch believes would stand behind its Thai subsidiary in a crisis, and the agency's view that Thailand's restriction on the foreign ownership limit at 49% is unlikely to prevent a capitalisation by UOB Group if required.

“The VR also reflects its continuing weak funding profile due to a modest franchise network… Fitch views that it would take at least one to two years for UOB (Thai) to improve both profitability and asset quality and longer to improve its deposit franchise, especially in light of intense competition for deposits in Thailand.’’

Fitch also notes UOB (Thai)’s strong capital position, with a Tier 1 ratio of 15.54% at end-December 2011, although this was down from 17.78% at end-2010 due to a more aggressive growth strategy. The bank’s long-term target of a Tier 1 ratio of 14%-15%, Fitch notes, is higher than most domestic and international peers, but appropriate for the bank's operating environment and risk profile. Asset quality had ‘steadily improved’ with non-performing loans declining to THB 7.5bn, or 3.96% of total loans at end-December 2011. This was weaker, however, than numbers posted by Thailand’s major domestic banks and UOB's other banking subsidiaries in Asia.

Mr Tay says Thai depositors should consider the heft and reach of the UOB Group, operating since 1935 in Singapore, with subsidiaries in Malaysia, Indonesia and China, over 500 branches in 19 countries and territories, and assets totalling almost S$237 billion, when thinking about the safety of their savings.

“That’s about the same as the combined assets of the three biggest Thai banks,’’ Mr Tay points out. “So while our market share in Thailand is only around three percent, there’s no doubt that regionally, we are a powerful force.

“UOB’s group CEO (Mr Wee Ee Cheong) has been very clear that liquidity and deposits are the building blocks of our business. We manage our own liquidity, raising deposits and lending to our customers as opposed to relying on interbank liquidity funding.’’

Beginning last year, UOB (Thai) launched its first major television, print and digital ad campaign to proclaim its Fitch AAA rating while challenging consumers to consider impact of changes to the DPA. It made the group’s first serious foray into social media, started a back of house ‘living the brand’ initiative for all its staff and appointed financial journalist and television personality Bancha Chumchaivate as the brand’s “Credit Rating Campaign Ambassador’’.

For a bank which had hovered in the background since its November 2005 incorporation following the merger of Bank of Asia and UOB Radanasin Bank, this was heady stuff.
“The campaign is about being proactive, transparent. We aim to be the bank that tells it like it is,’’ Mr Tay said. “That’s why we adopted the ‘Ask Me’ initiative, to give all our team members at the coalface the knowledge and tools to answer people’s questions about the DPA and how it affects them.’’

Whether any of this boosts the bank’s bottom line remains to be seen. For now, UOB (Thai) claims a network of 157 branches, 373 ATMS and 31 foreign exchange kiosks nationwide as of March 31, 2012.

In 2011, the bank turned a net profit of THB 1,474 million, almost THB 400 million less than in 2010, although much of that loss can be blamed on the impact from Bangkok’s worst floods for 60 years. Total assets are listed at a whisker under THB 300 billion, up almost THB 50 billion from the preceding year, with loans at around THB 190 billion, up from THB 163 billion in 2010, and deposits of THB 166 billion.

By comparison, Thailand’s biggest homegrown bank, Bangkok Bank, has over 1000 branches, and saw profits jump by more than 11 percent last year to THB 27.3 billion.

Mr Tay said the UOB (Thai) had to pick its battles and play to its strengths as a foreign-owned David in a market of Thai Goliaths. “UOB is very strong in consumer and SME banking, and these two sectors will continue to be our engine of growth, supplemented by large corporates.

“We have launched our privileged banking service, to serve individuals with assets of upwards of three million baht. We try to make it a very personalised experience, with special briefings by our leading economists and analysts, combined with events like our ‘Three for Tea’’ tea tasting afternoons in Chinatown.

“We have also been pursuing a strategy of ‘clusters’ in terms of our branches, focusing on areas with a concentration of individual wealth and business activity, such as Chinatown, the CBD around Sathorn, the Sukumvit area, and areas of new growth like Rayong and Chonburi on the Eastern Seaboard.’’

As part of its plan to use the DPA changes as impetus for growth, Mr Tay said that besides high net worth individuals, the bank had also targeted Thailand’s new ‘mass affluent’ by lowering minimum investments in bills of exchange and fixed term deposits to THB 500,000, from one to three million baht.

Mr Tay said ‘aggressive’ plans were in place to grow the Thailand operation’s contribution to the group’s total earnings from the present level of under five percent. The goal, he said, was to grow the ‘mass affluent’ and high net worth individual business in Thailand to account for 50 percent of the group’s earnings in those sectors, up from the current level of around 35 percent.

Thailand is abuzz with various theories and rumours on the extent of the effect the DPA changes could have on deposit levels. A Thammasat University academic recently circulated a paper claiming deposits in Thai banks could be halved as consumers seek safer havens for their money. Former Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij warned last year that the DPA’s fund base of around THB 52 billion was far too small considering the nation’s total deposits of THB 7 trillion.

The DPA fund base will rise following a hike in the levy on banks from 0.4 percent of their deposit base to 0.47 percent. Persistent lobbying from the Thai Bankers Association has also seen the government act to bring state-owned banks including the Government Savings Bank (which had seen deposits soar by almost 30 percent to THB 1.53 trillion as investors sought refuge from the DPAchanges) and Government Housing Bank under the DPA’s control and subject to the levy.

Singha Nikornpun, president of DPA, said it would take four to five years for the agency to accumulate the THB 200 billion required to cover 98.5 percent of total deposit accounts (which also illustrates the amount of wealth held by Thailand’s ‘one percenters’).

Mr Singha does not expect fund flows from commercial banks to state-run banks after August 10. He also pointed to the January 1 expiry of Hong Kong’s
Deposit Protection Board and the new protection limit of HK$500,000, which had been accepted by the public with minimum fuss.

I'LL BE BANK

Mr Tay said UOB (Thai) did not expect any ‘big shift of money’ between institutions or any real panic in the market. “It’s an education process. The Thai economy is performing well and confidence in banks is high.’’

His bank’s contribution to this ‘education process’ – its AAA/DPA campaign – brought the scrutiny of the Bank of Thailand, which takes a dim view of anything that could destabilise or undermine confidence in the nation’s banking sector. The campaign was deemed to fall within acceptable limits, but the central banker’s gaze will remain fixed upon the Robot Building as UOB (Thai) makes its case as a safe haven for deposits.

At the time of his beloved building’s launch in 1986, Mr Jumsai, the doyen and philosopher king of Thai architecture, wrote that it “need not be a robot’’ and that a “host of other metamorphoses’’ would suffice, as long as its daring design drove debate and created change.

He might yet get his wish. Change is in the air. The robot is coming to life.

Schoolchildren giggle, fidget and stare as an Englishman in a tailored pink shirt sits cross-legged and sweat-drenched on the rough wooden floor of their schoolroom. He is reading a message in halting but creditable Thai. Behind him, a priest slouches, hands clasped, garb askew, beaming at the kids from above a dog-eared dog collar.

Water laps at the floorboards from below; the run-off from Thailand’s worst floods in 60 years. We are deep in the backstreets of Bangkok’s Suttisan district, at one of the schools run in the city’s slums and poorer quarters by the unorthodox cleric Father Joe Meier and his Human Development Foundation.

The perspiring Englishman is his friend and benefactor Robert Mullis, the charmingly eccentric chief of Mullis Partners, an entity that lives up to its billing as ‘a unique investment bank’. This morning, he’s giving a million baht – not to mention 10 tonnes of rice dumped in a pile on his front lawn and bagged by his friends and family – to help the foundation’s flooded schools.

Later, he’ll likely be found in his Bangkok firm’s 37th floor Exchange Tower eyrie, analyzing some arcane aspect of petrochemicals or shipping, plotting slicker ways to stitch loans together or swotting up on the deal du jour.

Then again, he might decide to dash up to the far northern province of Chiang Rai to discuss patchouli oil with the head of his organic farm, pop over to Nepal for a chukka or two of elephant polo, check in with his “discovery’’, Thai pop star Tata Young, or spend the afternoon skimming through screenplays, a movie mogul manqué.

Mullis might just be the Renaissance Man of Thailand finance; a right-brain thinker and arch connector who has carved a niche as concocter of creative deals for cash strapped clients in messy industries while hobnobbing with Hollywood royalty and finding time to indulge a diverse array of interests and passions.

As an interview subject he is hard to keep up with and occasionally difficult to quote; sentences are left dangling from a string of ellipses, his mind on board the next train of thought. He is cheerily candid about the near collapse of his company six years ago. “There was a loss of success at some point’’ is how he puts it.

MULLIS OBLIGE: FLAGS OUT FOR THE KIDS

Mullis launched out on his own in 1998, sensing opportunity in Thailand’s crisis. This followed stints with three investment banks - NatWest Markets, Paribas Capital Markets and Credit Lyonnais Securities (Asia) – where he managed deals totaling over US$3 billion. Since establishing what was then Mullis Capital, he has arranged loans, merged, acquired and otherwise dispensed advice on everything from telecom, shipping and petrochemical plays to major movies and record labels.

The flood aid project for Father Joe was cobbled together in the space of a couple of weeks, through sheer force of personality and personal connections, complete with a letter from Amanda Thirsk, Deputy Private Secretary to the Duke of York, conveying the best wishes and gratitude of the inhabitants of Buckingham Palace to Robert Mullis, Esquire, for doing Britain proud during Thailand’s wettest hour.

But that’s just how Mullis rolls. When a friend needs help, a subject catches his passion, or he gets the scent of a deal, he is like a dog with a bone. According to one Hong Kong private equity specialist, Mullis is well known and respected for his deal-making skills and bottomless reserves of tenacity. “He has a unique perspective,’’ says the source. “His global experience and Thai knowledge allow him to provide more customised solutions compared with local firms that are mostly limited to their existing markets, and international institutions that are focused on covering either sovereign transactions or servicing very large firms while neglecting the middle market.

“In Thailand, domestic firms focus on volume aimed at local investors, while the likes of Goldman Sachs need to focus on very large deals to cover their costs. Thus, there is a bit of a gap in the market and the information packages that Robert prepares are very thourough, comprehensive and value-added, as opposed to a generic information memo.’’

One of Mullis’ fellow Thailand expatriate investment bankers says: “I haven’t seen or heard much of him these days. I think he had a few lucky breaks early on and then went on to do a few more deals. I think his weakness is that he doesn't have a true Thai partner.’’

AND I SPLASH THE PATCHOULI OIL JUST HERE ....

Mullis would beg to differ, and says his true Thai partner is his wife, Wassana, who was “a tower of strength’’ through the investment bank’s difficulties. A close friend and Managing Director of InFocusAsia, regional producer of documentary films, Frank Smith, says Mullis is generous to a fault, fiercely loyal and “has a knowledge and interest level that never ceases to amaze me’’ on a broad range of subjects. “He understands the finer points of so many things. On several occasions where he had absolutely no financial interest at all, he shared his knowledge to help me with deals I was involved in. It’s true that he doesn’t give up.

“He looks at deals the same way he looks at life. A deal is fun, an opportunity to learn and solve problems and see what can be done. He is intensely interested in the process of everything. He has a spark, a twinkle in his eye. For some people who are not as full of enthusiasm, energy and ideas, he can be an overwhelming character, a bit of a force of nature.’’

His coups include securing project financing of US$360 million for Indorama Petrochem Limited, a subsidiary of Thailand’s Indorama Group, the world’s 11th largest producer of polyester, operating in Indonesia, India, Thailand, Ireland, USA, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Lithuania. The group manufactures a wide array of products including PET Resin, Polyester Yarn, Preform bottles, and plastic bottle caps. The deal, concluded in 2006, took three years to put together and allowed the company to become one of Thailand’s largest manufacturers of Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA), critical to the polyster manufacturing process.

Mullis was appointed to advise on the THB 4.8 billion expansion of Vinythai PLC, South East Asia’s third largest PVC producer, partly owned by Thailand’s giant Charoen Pokphand Group, arranging the sale of 20 percent of the company to Thai Olefins PLC, ensuring a supply of ethylene needed for expansion while also negotiating a debt facility of Baht 2 billion (US$52m) with Bangkok Bank; did M&A advisory on the US$30m sale of Chinese resin company Shunde Syntech Resin, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huarun Paints Holdings, the Hong Kong-based holding company of one of China’s leading paint businesses to Dutch Group DSM; and negotioated a US$16 million loan for Hong Kong shipping firm Sunwise Navigation in late 2004.

Around the same time he was pondering polyester, he was appointed by lycra-loving pop singer Tata Young as promoter for her first English album, “I Believe,” released by (Sony Music) Columbia Records, following an earlier undisclosed investment to launch of her career. But this was just the overture to his real passion play: in 2006, his bank invested over AUS$1 million and he raised almost AUS$9 million more to make Little Fish, an award-winning film starring Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Sam Neill, with a production team led by Barrie Osborne, producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Flying high and swept up in the glamour, Mullis now admits he took his eye off the main game while expanding too aggressively. As he partied with A-listers, the team he’d left minding the store was struggling.

“We definitely came close to losing our shirts,’’ he says. “It’s a great film but I learned a lot about what not to do.’’ A legal wrangle over an AUS$20 million film grant diverted further time and resources as the world economy lurched towards crisis and his bank teetered on the brink of insolvency.

“I had quadrupled our budget, hired some expensive people, but it didn’t work out.’’ A painful round of downsizing was forced by the realization that his bank’s balance was fast approaching zero. Mullis Capital became Mullis Partners, but in reality it is The Mullis Show, for he is his bank.

Refocused and running the show alone, he pulled off his biggest deal, a refinancing and new loan facility for Thailand public company Precious Shipping to the tune of a just under US$600 million, which saw the company’s shares soar by more than 1000 percent in the space of three years. His commission and fees were substantial. “We paid every bill, cleared every debt, and got to start with a clean slate.’’

Mullis doesn’t believe in the art of the deal, so much as the craft and graft. “The key? You just can’t give up. We don’t get the simple deals, the huge bond issues you do if you’re Goldman Sachs. Our deals tend to be more complicated.
In fact, our clients have usually been to Goldman Sachs and everyone else and we’re the last port of call.

“Why do clients keep coming back? Why is 70 percent of our business repeat customers? What I’ve tried to do is be a bit more creative when it comes to structuring deals. Here’s an example. In the shipping industry, most financing was done over five or six years, which is utterly absurd when shipping tends to run in three to four year cycles. So you’d borrow and pay the bank off just as your ships’ value starts to fall. So we started doing 10 and 12 year refinances for shipping companies, and suddenly these deals started throwing off cash flow.’’

BUY LOW. SELL WIDE.

Another expatriate Bangkok investment banker suggests managing egos and bridging expectation gaps are key to putting deals together - areas where Mullis excels. “The art of the deal is also about demonstrating value creation, being able to play a network in forging value for the client, which could mean the ability to swing a new banker, find new money, or create new business alliances.

“Time to market is also important. Thailand deal making is suffering from very long lead times simply because everyone lets their ego run above everything else. It’s not just about getting the best price. It’s about getting the deal done. From what I’ve heard, Mullis is good on restructuring, bringing life back into a difficult situation. A bit of a fixer.’’

Mullis’ most recent “fix’’ was the tricky business of advising Globex Corporation on the acquisition of a 51.98 percent stake in Thailand’s oldest construction firm, Christiani and Nielsen (Thai) Public Company Limited, from the Crown Property Bureau Equity Company Limited, for just over THB 1 billion, with a loan facility of just over THB 2 billion also negotiated with Bangkok Bank. The deal was concluded in November last year. “Now that was a deal that had its moments,’’ says Mullis.

He won’t be drawn on pending deals, but says the areas that excite him most are agriculture and entertainment. He foresees a strong future in organic farming and he is looking into setting up an investment fund. In the meantime he is practicing what he preaches with his own set-up in Chaeng Saen on the Mekong river in Thailand’s northernmost province, Chiang Rai; his wife’s hometown and where he has bought over 200 rai of land to grow teak, organically-farmed patchouli oil and rare orchids.

In between time spent on the farm “driving my tractor and watching my trees grow’’, he has also been devouring every book he can find, including some he has had translated from Thai, on the history of the Lanna Kingdom which once stretched over vast tracts of northern Thailand. He just smiles when asked about the scope of his own landholding ambitions but it should be noted that he has called his company “Million Fields’’, a direct translation of “Lanna’’.

Somehow the conversation veers into a discussion of organic fertilizer and manure, which in turn leads to the Asian elephant that adorns the Mullis Partners logo. Mullis waves away suggestions that it might be seen as something clumsy, slow and hard to turn around. “The elephant,’’ he opines, “is family-minded, thick-skinned … and it never forgets.’’

Saturday, 5 May 2012

Unearthed a mix I did of my favourite breakbeat tracks, all done on vinyl, circa 2007, with a wicked white label mix I had of the Beastie Boys' Intergalactic somewhere in the middle. A few other bits of funk too I fink. DJ Love Handles, Big Phat Breaks ... http://www.mixcloud.com/jasongag/big-phat-breaks/

In their own magazine Grand Royale (also their defunct record label) the Beastie Boys paid tribute to the tonsorial travesty that is the mullet in "Mulling over the Mullet''. When I heard about their obsession with mullets, it inspired me to write this piece, swanning around Hong Kong for a couple of days in an appalling mullet wig I had made. The story had to begin, of course, with a Beastie Boys quote ... http://twocountriesonecistern.blogspot.com/2011/08/confessions-of-mullet-head.html

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The Perpetrator

Jason Gagliardi is a subeditor and columnist at The Australian. Previously he was based for 25 years in Hong Kong then Bangkok. As a Bangkok-based freelance writer, his stories have featured in publications including Time, the Sunday Telegraph Magazine, Colors, Playboy and Sports Illustrated. Jason was later the Communications Director at boutique PR hotshop Delivering Asia Communications. He is co-author of Dorling-Kindersley’s Top 10 Guide to Hong Kong and Macau. He is a columnist for the South China Morning Post. He is also a creative consultant and copywriter with some of Bangkok's leading independent branding and advertising agencies, a sometime DJ and a one-time ballet dancer.